


there's a hole where something was

by Princex_N



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Brain Damage, Canon Compliant, Conversations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Medical Trauma, Memories, Memory Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Project Freelancer, Psychological Trauma, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Season/Series 13 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 10:24:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16574681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: The first thing Epsilon opens is Wash's personnel file. Most of it is information that Epsilon can remember from Alpha, who'd been given access to every Freelancer's file. Epsilon scans it quickly, in case there's information in there that they had hidden from Alpha and doesn't miss the large gap in Washington's service history immediately following Epsilon's implantation.That should have been his first hint that something was deeply and terribly wrong.Epsilon realizes that something isn't adding up about what he remembers from his and Washington's time together, and goes to dig for the answers.





	there's a hole where something was

**Author's Note:**

> We're playing a little fast and loose with canon here, but it should be largely accurate to what we know from canon.

It starts, as things usually tend to around here, with a stupid argument.

Carolina has been thinking about going on a mission without him, and Epsilon is looking for other implants to shack up in while she’s gone. His search isn’t particularly successful, especially after Wash overhears him asking Tucker if he would mind.

“Absolutely not,” Wash says, in his stupid Serious Freelancer Voice (which has never been particularly effective, not even during his actual years on the Mother of Invention. Alpha remembers that, which means Epsilon remembers too), as if he has any actual say in the conversation.

Tucker and Epsilon both protest his complete shutdown of the possibility, in predictably different ways. Tucker speaks up to point out that Epsilon has _already_ been in his storage unit, so the implants shouldn’t be too different. Epsilon just wants to know what Wash’s problem with him is.

“You’re the one who left _me_ , back then,” he snarls, angrier than he probably should be about this particular conversation, but he can’t act like the feelings haven’t been building since he’d remembered Wash back in that valley, Wash and everything that he’d done. “I don’t know where you get off being so bitchy about me _now_.”

Despite Washington’s may attempts to come across as a Serious Leader who would never sink so low as to get involved in pointless arguments, the man can definitely dish out as many ridiculous comebacks as the rest of these idiots.

 So, Epsilon is maybe a little taken aback when the only thing Wash does is stiffen and leave without saying another word.

Tucker, who watches this brief exchange with an air of unease, simply says, “Aw man, you didn’t tell me you guys had some kind of weird break-up. Sorry man, I’m not getting in the middle of all that.”

Which fucking figures.

Epsilon returns to Carolina, frustrated and the slightest bit confused. Wash doesn’t talk to him a lot, probably because Epsilon is the one who keeps bringing up their history when Wash is obviously trying to pretend like none of it ever happened, but something about the interactions they _do_ manage to have feels off. Wash never tries to argue with Epsilon or defend his actions – never says much about Epsilon’s implantation and subsequent removal at all, actually, no matter how hard Epsilon tries to goad him into responding.

Something isn’t adding up.

(Wash isn’t the type to shy away from the actions he’s taken, after all. So why is this one different?)

So, Epsilon – who has never been good at letting sleeping dogs lie – immediately starts to pry.

He doesn’t go to Washington, because the man has already proven time and time against that he’s not going to talk about it, which means that the only other person he can try to get answers from is Carolina.

“I was on a lot of missions back then,” she tells him, which is a nice way of saying _‘I was doing everything and anything I could to be as far away from the Ship as possible.’_ “I didn’t hear anything until after they had pulled you, but I didn’t a chance to see Wash again before the Meta threw me off the cliff.”

Epsilon gets the distinct sense that she’s being deliberately evasive.

“I did get all of the Project’s records, though,” she admits at Epsilon’s expectant silence. Her voice is uncertain, and the words come hesitantly, which is unusual all on its own. Carolina doesn’t hide from the facts of situations either (not many people can afford to, in the army), which means that this entire situation might be _far_ more complicated than Epsilon initially thought.

“You still have them,” he notes, faux casual.

“I do.”

There is an extended pause where they both wait for the other to make the first move.

Epsilon is the one to break first. He usually is.

“Do you want to give them to me? Or am I going to have to track them down on my own?” he asks, projecting as much surety as he can into their shared mental space. This isn’t a bluff. He wants – and has the right – to know.

Carolina sighs a little. He can tell that she’d been hoping to avoid this, but she knows better than to think that he would just let it go because she thinks he should. “I’ll give them to you,” she tells him. “But you have to actually be prepared to see them.”

Epsilon doesn’t know what to say to that, but he isn’t changing his mind. Much like them, he’s never been one to shy away from reality either.

She understands what he hasn’t put into words, and he can feel her steeling herself. She brings him back to her quarters and pulls out a storage unit, small enough to fit into the palm of her hand. “You’re going to have to go in there,” she tells him, as if he hasn’t had enough traumatic experiences with storage units already. “I don’t want this information on anything else, and I think you’re going to want to be alone when you go through it.”

Maybe she’s just as aware of Epsilon’s history as he is. Maybe this is a challenge. Or, maybe, it’s an opportunity to back out.

Epsilon doesn’t take it. He transfers into the unit and starts digging.

It takes him a while to isolate the files that he’s looking for. When Carolina had gone on her missions to dig up everything on the Project, she’d dug up _everything_ on the Project, and she doesn’t appear to have deleted anything. Epsilon’s only saving grace is the fact that FLISS had kept up a decent tagging and organizational system while she had still been active in an attempt to compensate for both the Director and Counselor’s habits of nigh-excessive note-taking. It makes the process a little bit easier, a _little_ , but Epsilon is definitely going to be talking to Carolina about organizing and consolidating data later.

The first thing Epsilon goes through is Wash’s personnel file. Most of it is comprised of information that Epsilon can remember from Alpha, who had been given access to every Freelancer’s file (knowing what _Epsilon_ knows, it was probably intentional – to make him feel familiar with the agents even though he wasn’t allowed to interact with them directly. That way it would hurt twice as much when he failed to protect them). Epsilon scans it quickly, in case there’s anything in there that they’d hidden from Alpha and doesn’t miss the large gap in Washington’s service history immediately following Epsilon’s implantation.

That should have been his first hint that something was deeply and terribly wrong.

Soon after finishing up with that file (and casually noting Wash’s stint as a Recovery Agent and his subsequent imprisonment, and maybe making a quiet joke to himself about how the guy probably earned it), he finds the file on their implantation process.

It’s… surprisingly short.

Or, maybe not _surprisingly_ , considering the fact that the two of them hadn’t been together that long – definitely not as long as any of the others had been. They hadn’t even gotten a chance to make it to their first ‘Check In’ appointment before Wash had chickened out and gotten Epsilon pulled, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that their file lacks all of that follow-up and commentary.

There’s a brief write up about the difficult implantation process, which Epsilon can vaguely recall. The thing about going immediately from being split off from the Alpha to being forcibly logged off and put into storage to be prepared for implantation is that Epsilon hadn’t had the time to process anything that the Alpha had left him with. Most of that processing had happened inside of Wash’s head, which Epsilon might feel vaguely guilty about, but only vaguely.

He watches the video attachment in the file; sees Wash go from responding normally to the doctors’ questions, sounding nervous and maybe a little eager, to wailing. The alarms that begin going off on almost every machine in the room do very little to cover the sound of Washington’s cries.

Epsilon doesn’t remember that.

He remembers his _own_ distress, and the small and terrified voice begging him to stop breaking things, and the way he had struggled to listen even through the maelstrom of _He hurt us,_ and _Allison,_ and _We trusted him_. He doesn’t remember the screaming.

No one’s but his own, anyway.

That probably should have been his second hint.

In the video, they sedate Washington to get him to be quiet (but Epsilon remembers that the drugs hadn’t done anything to hinder _him_ ), and he hears a doctor hesitantly ask if they should pull the unit.

The Director tells them no.

By the time Washington wakes up in Medical, Epsilon has calmed down enough to realize what’s going on, fix some of the damage he’d caused, and beg Wash not to tell anyone what he knows.

Wash never says a word.

They made it almost three days before Washington had asked for Epsilon to be pulled.

Only that’s not what the files say.

Epsilon _looks_ for it, for that confirmation that that’s what had happened, but he can’t actually find it (and the more he thinks about it, the less sense it makes that the Director would have _allowed_ that. Washington’s implantation had happened mere days after Carolina had lost consciousness during her training session – Wash had been nervous, considered delaying or forgoing the procedure all together. _To break one part is to break the whole_ ; the Director wouldn’t have let Wash give up if he hadn’t let him back out the first time.)

Instead, he finds notes from numerous doctors aboard the Mother, each putting in several requests for Washington to remain in the infirmary for longer, several raised concerns about his physical health and mental state, and the possibility of brain damage. Acknowledgement and dismissal from the Director in response to every single on, until he apparently gets fed up with the notifications and decides to speak to Washington himself.

Epsilon remembers that encounter, mostly. Washington had barely been able to walk straight but the Director had insisted that he come to his office, Epsilon had forced himself to joke about the guy being a lazy asshole just to get Wash to quit focusing on the lingering pain and memories and relax a little. He remembers barely getting through the door before he’d seen the Director, remembered everything he had done to them (remembers _feeling_ everything that he had done, as clearly as if it were happening for the first time), and getting red-hot unspeakably _pissed_. The flood of emotions and subsequent pain that Epsilon had assumed pushed Washington over the edge.

He’s pretty sure that if it had been that simple, there wouldn’t be a video attachment in the records.

He watches it with the smallest bit of hesitance beginning to unravel in his code.

It begins with Wash walking into the Director’s office and freezing in the doorway, unable to even get over the threshold. Epsilon watches as he makes an obvious attempt to calm himself down (to calm _Epsilon_ down), only to fail and instead degrade into obvious panic. While Wash yells aloud for Epsilon to _stop, please stop it_ , his body lunges forward to wrap armored hands around the Director’s throat.

It takes three armored guards to pull him off of the Director. Wash seems entirely preoccupied by whatever Epsilon is doing to him in the meantime; barely even grunts as the guards beat him back and pin him viciously to the ground.

“Epsilon, what are you doing?” Wash asks, his voice high-pitched with panic in a way that Epsilon had found funny to think about only a few minutes ago. Above him, the Director has one hand pressed gingerly to his neck as he orders the guards to take them to have Epsilon pulled. (Epsilon’s own voice echoes up at him from somewhere in the depths of his own memory banks, _If I’m going down, I’m taking all of you with me_. Which doesn’t make any _sense_.) “Epsilon? _No, wait-…”_

And he dissolves into wordless screams of agony.

Epsilon stops the video before it can continue. He doesn’t breathe, he doesn’t have lungs, but he gets the impression that his chest hurts, that he’s breathing too hard, that he can’t catch his breath, but that doesn’t make sense.

Why doesn’t he remember any of that?

Epsilon is literally _made of memory_. If anyone should remember what’s going on in this video, it should be _him_ , so why can’t he recall _any of it?_

It takes him a while to force himself to continue.

It would be easy to stop now, to leave things where they are and refuse to keep digging, but the morbid curiosity alone would drive him insane.

(Also, maybe it’s possible that Washington deserves a little more than that.)

The Director doesn’t retract his order to have the Epsilon unit removed. After they pull it, it remains completely unresponsive to outside stimuli, even after they’ve more or less forcibly pulled it open to look inside. No one, the Director himself included, is able to make sense of the remaining code. The Counselor is the first to suggest that perhaps the Epsilon unit self-destructed.

Epsilon himself takes a moment to consider this.

His first instinct is to disagree, because it’s the _Counselor_ putting forth the suggestion and honestly, _fuck_ that guy. But Epsilon also can’t think of another possible explanation. It might have been possible that the records are falsified, and they just wanted an excuse to not use him again, but Epsilon can’t think of a world where the Director wouldn’t have wanted to take the opportunity to experiment more, so that can’t be right.

AI code can self-repair to a certain extent; it’s why Alpha was able to split off so many sections of his own code and still remain a coherent AI. Epsilon had been offline for several years after the date on this incident report. It wouldn’t be entirely out of the question for him to have tried to self-destruct, only to repair over the years to become a still-functional AI now. It might even explain why he can’t remember any of what had happened.

He keeps digging.

Wash spends a short time in a coma after the Epsilon unit is pulled (looking at his brain scans, it’s no wonder why. Humans don’t repair the way AI can. Epsilon doesn’t have a stomach, but he still feels sick looking at the damage he’d caused.) When he finally regains consciousness, he appears dazed and confused, fails to answer several of the questions used to gauge his brain functions, and answers incorrectly to almost all of the others (some, like the date, are understandable. Others, like his name, are not.)  He continuously asks for Epsilon and doesn’t seem to understand when he’s told that the AI has been pulled. Both his long and short-term memory appear to be affected – he asks questions and follows along with conversations, but almost invariably asks the same things later.

The Counselor spends several hours a day with Washington – pushing Wash’s other doctors and teammates out of the room, ‘for privacy’. Epsilon compares the man’s notes to the heavily redacted videos of their sessions and can immediately tell why Wash seems to deteriorate after every conversation. Between the incessant confusing questions and the none-too-subtle gaslighting and driving, it’s no wonder Wash seems to have an even harder time understanding what’s going on around him when the man is finished with him.

(The worst is when they drill him on different scenarios – force him to explain what he’d done wrong and what he should have done differently, over and over. _Just like Alpha_ , a part of Epsilon rages. He wonders if Wash had even noticed.)

There are nearly three weeks of this before the incident that brings down the MOI. Epsilon watches through salvaged footage as Washington wanders around, confused, as the ship begins to shake around him. He’s helped back into bed a few times by the handful of nurses that managed to keep a level head, but he’s soon forgotten in the chaos. Epsilon can hear how confused he is as he tries to contact someone, _anyone_ , on the helmet he only still wears due to Freelancer protocol.

The confusion doesn’t abate after the crash, when he’s pinned down by fallen equipment and furniture, alternating between remembering that he’s still on the Mother and trying to figure out where he is, trying not to panic at the sight and sensations of the flames closing in on him as he calls for any _one_ of his teammates to come help him.

Epsilon’s nonexistent hear twists _painfully_ when he hears Wash calling for _him_.

In the end, it’s not even one of the remaining Freelancers that comes to his aid (even though almost all of them that remained were accounted for on the ship just prior to the crash – Epsilon checks). It’s one of the dozens of random emergency responders who finds him and helps him out of the burnt wreckage of the crash. For the first time in a while, Epsilon feels angry on _Wash’s_ behalf.

Washington is one of many issues and personnel to be swept under the rug as the Project (specifically, the Director) tries desperately to cover its ass. His chance of recovery and reinstatement is officially declared to be slim to none, he’s honorably discharged for medical reasons, and is sent off to a long-term care facility, paid for by the ‘generosity’ of the Director himself.

Epsilon digs through the archives from _that_ place, pathetically grateful for the fact that he and Carolina share the same bullheaded determination to have _all_ of the facts of a situation (a trait that, ironically, they both inherited from her father). It’s obvious that they aren’t equipped to deal with the kind of trauma that Washington has suffered, particularly with how his records and the information surrounding his ‘injuries’ have been so heavily redacted. Some of the nurses try their best, but there’s a distinct lack of care being provided.

Whether it’s because of the new head injuries he’d sustained in the crash, or the recognition that he’s in unfamiliar territory, or the finally absorbed awareness of the fact that he’s truly been left alone, Wash’s condition degrades significantly. His confusion turns into full-blown catatonia. When he’s responsive, he’s noted as rarely answering to his own name, struggles to follow complex conversations or instructions, and gives contradictory and faltering responses to questions about personal information, no matter how simple.

(When asked if he had any living relatives that they could contact for him, he says he has four sisters, but can’t offer up their names. The next time, he mentions a wife and child. When asked about them later, he adamantly denies all of it, insists that he never had a family in the first place. The question of his favorite color gets a series of uncertain responses; blue, gray, yellow, green. He tells them he’s allergic to peanuts, but when he manages to snag a handful when no one is paying attention, he has no adverse reaction.)

(Seeing all of this with Wash out of armor makes it feel so much worse than it had seemed when he was still on the Mother of Invention. He seems so much smaller, more vulnerable, without the bulky protection of the armor surrounding him. Washington had never been good at schooling his facial expressions, Epsilon remembers, it was one of the reasons he’d hated being caught without his helmet on. Something that had been funny, up until now.)

Throughout the days spent at the hospital, he sits where he’s placed and usually refuses to leave his room at all if he’s given a choice. He eats only sparingly, and more often than not, winds up having to be force-fed ( _some_ of the doctors are decently respectful about it). Every once in a while, he has a panic attack or a meltdown that leaves him screaming, acting on sheer instinct to take down nurses and guards in his way before someone manages to wrestle him to the ground and sedate him.

At night, they strap him to his bed because of his proclivity for violent nightmares. He wakes up screaming in pain, tearing at the delicate skin and machinery implanted in the back of his neck until he bleeds, calling out for old teammates or for Epsilon. When he starts avoiding sleep entirely in an attempt to dodge the nightmares, dredging up Freelancer training from _somewhere_ in his scattered mind to stay awake for four days before someone notices, they start to give him sedatives. He stops screaming at night, but instead wakes up in worse condition than he had been when he was. He begs not to be given the medication at night and is ignored.

(One woman is noted as being removed from the list of nurses assigned to Washington’s care, “neglect to administer necessary medications” cited as the cause. Epsilon privately thanks her, despite the fact that it hadn’t really done anything in the long run. At least someone had tried.)

(Epsilon mentally shies away from the fact that he’s one of many who _hadn’t_.)

It takes two years of this before Washington begins to show signs of recovery. He begins to make deliberate declarative statements about his preferences and begins responding solely to his own name again. Starts to take a more active role in his personal care; takes showers instead of merely allowing himself to be bathed, feeds himself more often, stops refusing to leave his room. The nightmares never stop, but he does a good enough job at the rest of it for that to be largely left alone. Once he’s off the medications, very few people notice that he’s started waking himself up before he can hit REM sleep, and they don’t keep insisting on the pills or the straps at night.

The moment people start to talk about him potentially being released into his own care, the Counselor makes a reappearance. Congratulates him on his recovery, mentions a position opening up that would be ‘perfect’ for him, if he wanted a job, and makes some subtly veiled threats before taking his leave.

Several nurses and doctors raise concerns about Wash going to work for him, and whether the man should even be allowed on the incredibly short list of permitted visitors, but Wash – stupid, stubborn Wash – tells them that it’s fine and rejoins the Project as a Recovery Agent.

The records begin to taper off there. There is some cursory information about his objectives, the encounters with his old teammates, the ultimate outcomes of his missions. The most notable thing there is when he goes rogue after encountering several sim troopers, is involved with the destruction of the Meta and Alpha AI, and ultimately ends up in prison.

There he gets into constant trouble with guards and other prisoners despite his dogged insistence that he’s only minding his own business. He’s labeled as violent and insubordinate, despite the apparent lack of incident reports, is on the receiving end of several injuries (which range in severity from bruises and split lips to a dislocated shoulder and broken wrist) and seems to spend a disproportionate amount of time in solitary.

The Counselor comes back with another job offer. Epsilon can’t find himself too surprised to see that Wash takes it.

Not long after _that_ mission starts, Agent Washington is declared Killed in Action, and his file comes to an end.

It’s a while before Epsilon exits the unit and goes to find Carolina.

“You knew,” he says simply.

She doesn’t hesitate. “I did.”

“You were declared dead before he was out of that hospital.” Maybe it’s not fair to bring it up, but he wants to know.

Her voice sounds cold when she says, “He would have slowed me down,” but Epsilon can feel the tidal wave of grief and guilt, the remembered hours of tortured deliberation, that follows his question. He lets it go. It’s not like he’s in any position to judge.

“I think I have to talk to him.”

“It might be a good idea,” she says, voice forcibly neutral. Epsilon can tell that she has no idea if that’s a good idea or not. Nether does he.

There’s a moment where Epsilon pauses to consider if he just shouldn’t. Washington doesn’t _have_ to hear Epsilon’s reasoning or excuses; it might even wind up backfiring in the long run. Epsilon doesn’t _deserve_ the opportunity to explain (definitely doesn’t deserve the chance to _defend_ himself. How could he even begin to try?)

But Wash has had enough people hiding things from him and manipulation, and even if Epsilon doesn’t do anything but stop acting like a bastard to the ma who really hadn’t done anything wrong in this regard, it feels a little too much like something the Counselor or the Director would choose to hide, to see what would happen, and Epsilon doesn’t want to be like either of them if he can help it.

“Do you know where he is?” he asks, mind made up. He’s had enough time indulging the parts of him that are Leonard Church, after all.

“I think he’s scheduled to be in the training room right now.” Her voice still sounds neutral, but he hopes that she thinks he’s making the right choice.

He hopes he’s making the right choice.

Usually if Epsilon wants to have a more private conversation with someone, he goes for their implants or their storage units. HE doesn’t think that Wash would appreciate his presence in either, especially not right now (Epsilon doesn’t think that _he’s_ comfortable with it, right now). He’s lucky that Charon is unique in its integration of AI function in its more basic technology.

He watches Wash train for a moment, debates whether he’s sure that this is smart, considers leaving and pretending that none of this had ever happened. But Epsilon doesn’t want this hanging over his head; doesn’t want to push this off and wait for it to come out in some more awful and inconvenient way sometime in the future.

“I didn’t remember,” Epsilon says finally, because he’s always been the type of believe that the bluntest phrasing is the best. He tries not to cringe at the sight of Wash going rigid, and a part of him almost wishes that the man was out of armor so that he’d at least know if Wash was angry or panicked.

In the end, all the man says is, “What?”

“I didn’t remember,” Epsilon repeats, “what happened before I was pulled. A lot of things haven’t been recovered yet, from when I… self-destructed? Is that what I did?”

“Are you fucking with me?” Washington turns to look at Epsilon’s projected form, yanking his helmet off, his face twisted into something like anger. But Epsilon has had three lifetimes of reading facial expressions and he doesn’t miss the desperate panic in the man’s eyes.

“No.” Epsilon has to resist the urge to fidget now that he’s the sole target of Wash’s attention. It’s been a while since that’s happened. “I could tell that something was off, after earlier. So, I went to Carolina to look through the records she has from the Project. I don’t remember anything after we were walking to the Director’s office.”

There is a moment where Washington stares at him, searching him for cues in facial expression and body language that Epsilon doesn’t really have. He tries his best to exude sincerity as best as he can, but that’s not really a gesture that Epsilon is familiar with anymore (if he ever really was to begin with).

And then he seems to deflate all at once, nearly staggering over to a nearby bench to sit down heavily, staring down at his helmet instead of at Epsilon.

“You just… _shredded_ everything,” Wash tells him finally, and Epsilon can’t hold back a flinch at the phrasing, despite (or maybe because of) how it’s probably the most accurate. “You had done a good job of keeping everything separate while you were implanted – things were mixed up, but you could tell the difference – but the moment you did that I couldn’t tell which memories were mine and which weren’t. It took me a really long time to be able to sort through it all again, but even now I think that there are still things missing or in the wrong place.”

Epsilon resists the urge to get closer, because he doesn’t think Wash would appreciate it. (He still tries to mimic some human behavior sometimes, to make it less awkward for the people that were used to Alpha, to Church, who had an actually human-sized body and who wasn’t a cobbled together chunk of traumatized code. He doesn’t know how well it all works.)

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know I’m usually a huge asshole, but I wouldn’t have been that much of a bastard about things if I had actually remembered.”

Wash snorts lightly. Epsilon can’t tell if Wash is actually amused by the self-awareness or not, but at least he’s trying. That’s more than Epsilon deserves.

“Everyone around here is kind of an asshole.” Which is admittedly hard to argue with, but Epsilon feels almost like he should. Because being bitchy about being ‘abandoned’ when, in reality, you’re the reason someone spent _years_ in and out of hospitals and prisons because you’d given him severe damage, is a little more than being ‘kind of an asshole’, but he doesn’t know if Wash wants him to argue that point or not.

(He doesn’t know how to act around Wash anymore, now that he doesn’t have his righteous anger behind him. He doesn’t know how to act now that he knows what he’s done.)

“Still, I’m sorry,” he says, because what else is there to say?

Washington looks back up at him, and his gaze lingers for longer than it has in a while. Epsilon fights not to look away, and Wash is the one who breaks eye-contact first.

“I wouldn’t mind if we tried again,” he mumbles down at his boots. “ _Not_ in my implants, just… like this. You know, slowly. But. I don’t think I would hate it.”

Epsilon doesn’t have to remember his entire time in Wash’s head to know the significance of that offer, of this outreach. Wash is barely the type to give second chances. Third chances are nearly unheard of.

But Epsilon doesn’t think he’s lying.

“I’d like that,” he replies, and the small smile that passes over Wash’s face only strengthens his resolve to not fuck it up this time.

(He doesn’t get the chance.)

(Later, barely even weeks later, Wash will get Epsilon’s message to him. Will hear him admit that he’d wanted to be friends with Wash as much as Wash had wanted to be friends with him, both the first time and the second. Will hear him apologize again, and lament about their lack of time to really learn how to get along. It will hurt, not as much as the first time Epsilon left, but almost. Wash doesn’t cry this time.)

(But it’s a surprisingly near thing.)

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


End file.
